The embossing of paper products to make those products more absorbent, softer and bulkier is well known in the art. Embossing technology has included pin-to-pin embossing where protrusions on the respective embossing rolls are matched such that the tops of the protrusion contact each other through the paper product, thereby compressing the fibrous structure of the product. The technology has also included male-female embossing, or nested embossing, where protrusions of one or both rolls are aligned with either a non-protrusion area or a female recession in the other roll. U.S. Pat. No. 4,921,034, issued to Burgess et al. on May 1, 1990 provides additional background on embossing technologies.
Deep nested embossing of multiply tissue products is taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,686,168 issued to Laurent et al. on Nov. 11, 1997; and 5,294,475 issued to McNeil on Mar. 15, 1994. While these technologies have been useful in improving the embossing efficiency and glue bonding of these multiply tissues, manufacturers have had difficulty using such deep nested embossing processes in low density single ply products because the strain exerted by the embossing process tends to tear the fibrous structure of the tissue product. Such tearing dramatically reduces the strength and integrity of the tissue product.
It has been found that certain selected fibrous structures may be deep nested embossed without significant tearing resulting in an essentially continuous tissue ply.